The touchdown that shook the Earth

It might or might not be one of the greatest upsets in NFL history, but one thing is beyond doubt: Marshawn Lynch's heroic 67-yard touchdown that snatched an unlikely victory for Seattle Seahawks against New Orleans Saints moved the Earth - literally.

John Vidale at the University of Washington in Seattle is director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network - a collection of seismograph stations in Washington and Oregon used to monitor the Cascadia subduction zone. He's also one of the unlucky Seahawks fans who missed this week's game. But when Vidale caught up with the game highlights online, he saw something unusual.

Coincidentally, the Seahawks' home ground - Qwest Field - is some 90 metres from one of the seismic monitoring stations, giving Vidale the unique opportunity to independently verify that Lynch's epic score sent shockwaves through the crowd - and the ground beneath the stadium.

Vidale has now confirmed that a 30-second-long peak in activity coincided with the touchdown. It took another minute for the shaking to finally die down, he said.

Although there's no news on the magnitude of the Qwest Field "quake", it must surely register relatively high on the "unlikely causes of seismic activity" scale - somewhere between the earthquakes allegedly triggered by building activity, and the bizarre suggestion of rain-induced quakes.